Tag Archives: Federal Reserve System

The young people are the change. They will be the revolutionaries of the next 10-30 years. I am encourage not because I agree with everything RP says but because so few young people are involved and these few seem enthusiastic. (E)

I ran across this recently in my wanderings and was amazed when I understood that Ron Paul has already won the election if he will avail himself of the opportunity that a third party run would give him. Read this and I think you will be wondering yourself if we are not on the brink of something akin to a revolution.

Let us hope so at least for I fear if a radical shift does not occur politically it may lead us into a very dark place. Forces are gathering and people want and are going to demand changes. If they do not see some sort of radical shift politically e.g. Ron Paul being elected, there may be an eruption of forces that cannot be controlled. E.

HOW RON PAUL CAN WIN & SPOIL NOTHING

by James Jaeger

The fact that Ron Paul effectively tied for second place in IOWA — a very conservative state — and then won second place in NEW HAMPSHIRE — a much more liberal state, shows the enormous spectrum of Dr. Paul’s appeal.

For the Republicans (the GOP) this must be quite uncomfortable — the idea that they are being forced to modify some of their wayward views just because a principled, constitutionalist and WE THE PEOPLE demand it.

But here’s what really terrifies them: Ron Paul is not only in a position to hand the election of 2012 over to Barack Obama and be labled a “spoiler” — he’s in a position to be a “winner.”

Etymology of the term “spoiler”:

The term “spoiler” is a derogatory term that was dreamt up by statists in the Democratic and Republican parties. They use this term to make you feel guilty and to sucker the public into continuously voting for no one outside the Establishment. In other words, if you vote your conscience, YOU are a “spoiler.” If you run for office on principles dictated by your conscience and take votes away from an Establishment candidate, YOU are a “spoiler.”

Thus, since Ron Paul votes his conscience, since he rejects certain aspects of the Establishment — such as the Federal Reserve‘s abuse of the monetary system and its financing of the welfare-warfare empire we have now become — there is no way apparatchiks in the GOP will nominate Dr. Paul no matter what WE THE PEOPLE want.

And to this end, lackey pundits in the CFR-dominated, mainstream media continuously chant that Ron Paul has “no chance to get the Republican nomination.” They spew this so often, it’s obvious they don’t believe their own lies.

But here’s the joker: Ron Paul does not even need the GOP to win the general election. If he were to walk away for a third party, he would take at least 12% of the Republican vote with him. He would also take another 15% from the Independents and at least 11% from the Democrats. This would give him 38% — enough of the vote to win the Presidency in a 3-man race.

GOP strategists know all this and this is why you will never hear them utter these statistics in the mainstream media. If the public were to become too “hopeful” — if they were to understand the mathematics of the situation — even more people would vote for Ron Paul if for no other reason than to be on the winner’s bandwagon.

So, the GOP has some serious choices to make.

Either they morph into a small-government party and support the Ron Paul Revolution of “getting back to the Constitution,” or they risk loosing their power to a new political party. And a new political would not only mean just the demise of the Republican party, but the Democratic party as well.

Since the Democratic Party AND the Republican Parties are BOTH the parties of BIG government, a new political party of SMALL government would reveal to the public more than ever, what the two mainstream parties have become.

The two mainstream parties — the Democrats and Republicans — have become, in essence, two departments of the same police state. They are the same political party in effect: growing the government ever larger and ever more militaristic, both domestically and internationally. The PATRIOT Act expands the police state domestically, and the UN, IMF, WTO, NAFTA, GATT and NATO — which they BOTH continuously and blindly support — expand the police state internationally.

Due to serious abridgements of the U.S. Constitution and principles stated in the Declaration of Independence, the united States are now run by a dictating oligarchy known as the UNITED STATES. And this dictating oligarchy is dominated bycultural Marxistsandcorporate fascistswho have hijacked the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.

The “DemoPublicans” have established the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of administering their police state and the PATRIOT Act has become their new Constitution.

If you accept the idea that the Democrats and Republicans (again the “DemoPublicans”) have become two departments of the same police state — two wings of the same ugly bird — you will have to accept that ultimately it does not matter whether a Democrat or Republican is elected to the presidency. It does not matter if Obama or Romney is elected President. Establishment politicians in either of these “two” parties will continue to use the Federal Reserve System to monetize debt (print money out of thin air) and use this fraudulent “fiat” currency to build their welfare-warfare state.

It could be said that Republicans specialize in printing money to build weapons and wage wars — Democrats specialize in printing money to address the sick and the poor. The Republicans thus CREATE the sick and the poor with their WAR-fare policies and the Democrats HEAL the sick and the poor with their WELL-fare policies.

Thus when an entity controls the HEALING and HURTING of Humankind, doesn’t that entity, in essence, CONTROL Human kind? Well, welcome to the DemoPublican control mechanism — something you might think about the next time you vote or mindlessly scream out for your Clinton-, Bush-, Obama-, Gingrich- or Romney-candidate.

Taken as a whole, the DemoPublican machine — now assembled more by supra-national, international banking families than American citizens — has destroyed U.S. politics that used to center on Constitutional principles. Controllers in this CFR-led embryonic world government have created a well-oiled machine to maximize the plunder of millions, if not billions of people, through the mechanism of central banking, debt and the hurting-healing cycle. Would it not be reasonable to posit that the Democratic and Republican Parties are thus primary tools in what seems to be a master plan of globalization?

Ron Paul — a strict limited-government Constitutionalist with an appreciation for ethnonationalism — does not fit in with the New World Order’s management plans. Therefore, whenever he wins ANYTHING: the DemoPublican controllers have a more serious problem.

Where Dr. Paul to ever get close to a GOP nomination, they would most likely either rig the elections or blackmail him by threatening his family, like they did when Ross Perot was getting too popular.

But if Dr. Paul walks away from the GOP to go Indy, in reality he will “spoil” nothing, for as discussed above, the Democrats and Republicans are the same political party in effect, so there is nothing that CAN be “spoiled”.

Since the DemoPublicans must continue the cockfight between them — so the illusion that they are “different” parties can be maintained — this fighting has been, of necessity, escalating to a GRIDLOCK. Note the endless fighting about extending payroll tax cuts, Obamacare and illegal immigration, and now Santorum is bringing religion and race into it. Thus, even if Ron Paul is labeled a “spoiler” — for thwarting the Establishment controller’s plan to get one of their cultural Marxist or corporate fascist puppets nominated or elected — he will spoil nothing.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR RON PAUL TO BE A SPOILER, BECAUSE:

A) THE DEMS AND GOP ARE THE SAME PARTY IN EFFECT, AND;

B) EVEN IF OBAMA GETS REELECTED, THE DEMS AND GOP WILL BE GRIDLOCKED AND THUS NOTHING WILL GET DONE.

Message More Important Than Party:

Undoubtedly Ron Paul hopes his cause will be able to save the Republican Party, but surely he believes the greater cause is to save the country. For many the idea of reforming the Republican Party is a glorious dream — but for many more, it’s a pipe dream.

And the reason for this is simple. Ron Paul’s vision comes from the U.S. Constitution, a document that the GOP establishment wandered away from decades ago.

Thus, if Ron Paul is really serious about change, he probably knows that the VEHICLE he uses to deliver that change is not that important. His Constitutional VISION is more important than the PARTY that delivers it.

Thus the GOP is right to fear that Dr. Paul may “quit the party when the primaries are over and run as a third-party candidate on the Libertarian or some other line in the November election” as political analyst and author of Suicide of a Superpower, Patrick J. Buchanan, observes.(1)

This fear was also expressed by Reagan campaign strategist, Ed Rollins, when he said that “Ron Paul should be given the respect he deserves.”

Buchanan feels, however that it is assured that Dr. Paul will not go third party. This is “not going to happen. Such a decision would sunder the movement Paul has pulled together, bring about his own and his party’s certain defeat in November, and re-elect Barack Obama,” says Buchanan.

But if Paul does NOT go third party, his life’s work may NOT culminate.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this statement depends on their philosophy of the GOP. If ones philosophy is that a tiger can change its stripes — that the GOP will somehow become the party of small government — then perhaps it makes sense for Dr. Paul to stick it out and be loyal. But is that really going to happen?

As evidenced by the current $15 trillion national debt, the Republican Party has become a big-government party similar to the Democratic party. This has happened on the watch of both parties. Both political parties are taking us down the “road to serfdom,” as F.A. Hayek might say. And the reason for this is the endless fiat money being issued by the Federal Reserve System (as we discuss in FIAT EMPIRE at http://youtu.be/5K41O2QfpjA ). Fiat currency funds the welfare state the Democrats want and the warfare state the Republicans want.

Again, neither major political party talks about this, or fiat money. Only Ron Paul talks about fiat money.

If the Democrats and Republicans won’t confront fiat money by discussing it, let alone by auditing and/or ending the Fed, THEN HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT EITHER PARTY WILL EVER BECOME A SMALL GOVERNMENT PARTY?

These two parties will thus destroy the dollar and eventually the U.S. as an industrial nation opening it up even more to the ravages of the PATRIOT Act mentality who value “security” more than freedom OR productivity. If this happens: THIS will be Ron Paul’s legacy, a coward that failed to go for the golden ring at a time when it could have made all the difference to millions.

The “movement Paul has pulled together” is unique in our times. It is nothing less than a revolution, and that’s why it’s called THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION. And contrary to Counsel on Foreign Relations propaganda, this revolution was the impetus for the Tea Party movement, a movement which now seems to have been co-opted and neutered by the GOP establishment.

BUT THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION CONTINUES IN SPITE OF THE GOP, NOT BECAUSE OF THE GOP.The GOP is NOT Ron Paul’s friend:

The GOP has never REALLY been Ron Paul’s friend, nor will it ever be — unless the unthinkable happens, RON PAUL GETS CO-OPTED BY THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT ITSELF. His supporters, of course, know this would never happen. In fact many observes think the GOP is only now pretending to be Ron Paul’s friend because he has them backed into a political corner. And the Ron Paul butt-kissing is all over the mainstream media to prove it. But none of this is sincere. Remember the days in the Winter of 2008 when Ron Paul was winning one FOX poll after another and Sean Hannity, a perfect GOP specimen, was practically spitting bullets? In fact, Hannity was so arrogant and disparaging to Dr. Paul, his fans practically tackled the super-pundit when he was leaving his building one evening on 7 Jan 2008. See angry Ron Paul fans screaming at Hannity in the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5rJI5e0jBU if you have forgotten the days when the GOP was showing its real colors to the Fed-slaying political messiah.

And let’s not forget the disrespect GOP-hopeful, Rudy Giuliani, showed for Dr. Paul when, in the 15 May 2007 debate, he mocked him before the world for stating that “the terrorists are over here because we are over there,” an observation first made by Pat Buchanan. See this debate athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD7dnFDdwu0if your memory of the GOP needs refreshing.

But don’t believe me, that the GOP once spat upon Ron Paul — Ed Rollins confirmed this treatment when he stated: “They didn’t treat him well, four years ago, when he (Ron Paul) stayed in the race to the bitter end.” See video of Ed stating this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7JArNMd20

So today — as evidence that self-sufficiency makes stronger individuals than the nanny state makes the collective — the growth of the Libertarian-conservative RON PAUL REVOLUTION, again, shows that Dr. Paul does not even NEED the GOP to win a general election for if he were to walk away for a third party in July, he would take at least 12% of the Republican vote, another 15% from the Independents and at least 11% from the Democrats. This would give him 38% — enough to WIN the presidency in a 3-man race.

Another reason one can be assured GOP pundits are terrified by a Ron Paul third party run is because they are desperately attempting to get him to commit to NOT running. Witness Sean Hannity trying to get a commitment from Dr. to NOT go third party athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3p9s1cSzko

But, even if Ron Paul did walk away from the GOP he would not BECOME a pariah in his party, he already IS a pariah in his party. He always has been and he always will be. Those who watched Ron Paul argue with Alan Greenspan on C-SPAN back in the mid-1990s know Ron Paul is also a pariah with the Federal Reserve System. That, in fact, is how I discovered Ron Paul and interviewed him for the documentary film,FIAT EMPIRE — Why the Federal Reserve Violates the U.S. Constitution. At that time, there were no other congressmen arguing with Dr. Greenspan. There were not even any other congressmen that COULD argue with Dr. Greenspan. Only Ron Paul could because he not only understands economics, he understands the difference between Austrian economics and the Keynesian economics that is now burying the nation — and WORLD — in debt! This is why THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION runs philosophically deep.

This is why Dr. Paul has been able to be consistent and why he has consistently stated that he cannot endorse any of the other GOP candidates and he doesn’t see how he could possibly run on a ticket with any of them due to differences in principle. How could Ron Paul double up with someone that doesn’t understand the difference between Austrian and Keynesian economics? How could Ron Paul double up with or support someone that doesn’t even know what fiat money is or what Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states? How could Ron Paul support someone that has no idea where Congress gets most of its money? Dr. Paul, as a true Constitutionalist, knows all of these things. The others are ignoramuses who just give the Constitution and economics lip-service.

A Third Party Run’s Effect on Rand Paul:

Some have argued that, were Dr. Paul to run as a third party candidate, his son,Senator Rand Paul, would be forced to endorse his father and essentiallyabandon the GOP. Rand Paul’s career with the GOP would thus be ruined.

Actually, whether Rand Paul endorses his father or not is no ones businessexcept Rand Paul’s and it’s not even relevant to THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION.

As great as it may be for a father to have a son follow in his footsteps, there are times when a greater concern outweighs family goals. If Rand Paul truly understands the importance of his father’s work, he will gladly support anything he does without personal concern. On the other hand, if Rand Paul would rather stay loyal to the GOP, that’s his prerogative. No rational person would stigmatize Rand Paul just because he made a different choice from his father.

But the greater question — given the great promise Rand Paul has so far demonstrated — is why would he even WANT to be a “future Republican leader” in a political party that was bringing the nation to ruin? With its profligate spending; empire-building ploys; debt-monetizing insanity, why would Rand Paul want to run the risk of becoming but a footnote in history by swimming counter to the currents of THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION?

Given the fact that the youth of the nation are endorsing THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION of small government, ending the Fed and an end to perpetual wars, the future of the GOP — which is against all these things — is NOT bright at all. In fact, the GOP, and the Democrats, are doomed. Like the sinking Titanic, all Republicans have been doing this past 30 years is re-arranging the deckchairs while the panem et circenses band plays on.

It is true that Ron Paul would be wise to stay with the GOP up until the last minute so he can maintain his media presence, but the very fact that he has to even DO this should tell us all something about the mainstream media. And that something is the fact that, like the GOP, the mainstream media is NOT any friend of Ron Paul or even of WE THE PEOPLE. So long as it endlessly consolidates and places its corporate advertisers’ interests above the public concerns, the mainstream media is a liability to a democratic market of ideas. Unfortunately, Ron Paul, a libertarian at heart, has been forced to operate on this media’s stage in order to get any play at all. Had Dr. Paul gone third party four years ago, he would have received almost no exposure and few today would know very much about his message. Note what happened to third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader, Harry Brown and Gary Johnson, etc. The exception was the multi-billionaire, Ross Perot, who got mainstream play ONLY because he self-financed his own media campaign.

Ron Paul started and represents a major populist CAUSE that millions endorse, yet the mainstream media still pushes the other candidates who just support the horse race for the status quo.

It is thus impossible for the GOP to “grow up” or change because it is locked into this competition with the Democratic Party. If the GOP stops with its program of handouts and entitlements, the public will always place Democrats in to power. This is the dilemma for the GOP and why no reform is possible, as we more fully discuss in the movie “SPOILER – How a Third Political Party Could Win.” See http://www.SpoilerUSA.org

Even still, Ron Paul giving his commitment tosupport the GOP is whatapologists for the GOP want. But if Ron Paul does this, he will have compromised his principles. Even if the GOP promises to change its ways, many will have serious doubts they will keep their promise.

The GOP and the DEMS have had their chance. They have both brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy and totalitarianism over the past 98 years. They will never reform or be able to BE reformed. No placation-speech — allotted to Ron Paul at the Republican National Convention — is going to reform either entrenched party or rescind the PATRIOT Act. The ONLY possibility for reform will come if Dr. Paul goes Indy sometime after the GOP selects its CFR-approved, status-quo nominee. In going Indy, the only risk is that Dr. Paul might not get 38%, hence the presidency. If this happens then Obama DOES get back in; but again, so what! Only blind partisans — or people that don’t quite grok the fact that both parties are identical in effect — will be concerned about this. Mitt Romney can NEVER be Ron Paul’s friend. Mitt Romney is a corporate fascist, as we define in the movie, CORPORATE FASCISM at http://youtu.be/hTbvoiTJKIs. He has depended on the bogus, artificial interest rates afforded by fiat money for every major business venture he has ever been involved with. Mitt Romney would NEVER end the Fed because the Fed is what butters his bread. It is doubtful if he would ever even AUDIT the Fed. Same goes for Gingrich and Santorum. Both these guys are big government guys, especially Santorum who will expand the military-industrial complex to the high heavens.

Constitutional Constituency Trumps Party Constituency:

Ron Paul’s constituency is NOT unipolar. Ron Paul’s constituency falls ACROSS the political spectrum as it well should. People who want smaller government, who want to audit the fed; reduce the debt; get out of foreign wars and rebuild the middle class are NOT only in the GOP, they are also in the Democratic party, but mostly Independents. They are the youth and people in the military. At least 38% of the people in the country WANT Ron Paul and only 12% of these come from the GOP. Thus, Ron Paul is actually BIGGER than the GOP. THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION supersedes the GOP and any particular faction. That’s why what’s happening is so special and why WE THE PEOPLE sometimes have difficulty understanding the magnitude of these events.

RON PAUL’S ONLY CHANCE FOR A MEANIGFUL LEGACY IS TO GO INDY AND TAKE THE PRESEDENCY. EVEN IF THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN, HE WILL HAVE OPENED THE WAY FOR A FUTURE “RON PAUL” TO TAKE THE PRESIDENCY. RON PAUL IS THE JOHN C. FREMONT OF OUR TIMES. See “Who Will Be Our Modern-Day Jefferson” by Nelson Hultberg at http://www.jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/modern.htm

Ron Paul’s most salient issues: auditing the Fed and eventually ending the fiat-currency fraud; downsizing of the U.S. empire; closing many or most of the 900 military bases in 130 countries; and establishing a mind-our-own-business foreign policy will never happen in the business-as-usual GOP or welfare state-crazed Democratic Party.

Thus, if Dr. Paul fails to use the power he has at this critical moment in history he will never have it again, nor will anyone else for a long time. The mainstream media is substantially bought and paid for by the entrenched parties. You can bet the Washington establishment and the K-street corporate fascists that have hijacked Congress, once the race is over, all will turn on Dr. Paul and make him as much of a non-person as the J.P. Morgan/Thomas Edison Establishment of the day turned on Nikola Tesla and literally erased him from the front page of TIME.

POWER MUST BE SEIZED, NEVER ASKED FOR. RON PAUL MUST SEIZE POWER IF HE HAS THE OPPORTUNITY. ONLY FROM A POSITION OF POWER CAN THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION RESTORE TRUE CONSITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES.

THE WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT, NOR THE CORPORATOCRACY THAT DOMINATES CONGRESS, IS ABOUT TO SURRENDER THEIR FIAT MONEY SYSTEM OR THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT SUPPLIES THE WORLD WITH WEAPONS AND FOMETS PERPETUAL WARS FOR PROFIT.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK FROM THE TRATORS AND TYRANTS THAT HAVE USURPED POWER OVER THE PAST 100 YEARS BY BASTARDIZING THE CONSTITUTION. RON PAUL STANDS IN A POSITION TO START THIS PROCESS — BUT ONLY IF HE GOES INDY AND TAKES A SHOT AT THE STARS.

Again, since Dr. Paul’s constituency is supra GOP — even if he defects from the GOP and fails at a presidential run — he will only estrange the people in the GOP that are stuck in the partisan game of Democrats vs. Republicans. In other words, he will only estrange the “spoiler mentality.” More and more of the country, as witnessed by the growth of the Independents, now recognize that BOTH political parties are wings of the same ugly bird. These people are the future. Ron Paul AND Rand Paul should be more concerned about these people than propitiating to the GOP establishment for a token speech or career some advancement.

The fact that Ron Paul has an investment portfolio with 21% in real-estate, 14% in cash and about 65% gold should be absolute proof that Dr. Paul believes the fiat financial system is doomed. He is thus more than a prophet, he is leading the way out. This leadership takes rank over any other consideration.

Eric Hoffer wrote a book entitled,THE TRUE BELIEVER: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. In this work, Hoffer maintains that revolutions are usually accomplished with only a small percentage of a population – between 1% and 7%. The vast majority are inert. If Hoffer’s observations are correct, THE RON PAUL REVOLUTION has, or will shortly have, more than enough supporters to make its CAUSE quite real.

Summary:

The term “spoiler” is used by two groups of people:

1) the ignorant or IQ-challenged person who knows little or nothing about politics or the art of war, and;

2) the statist propaganda-merchant who is trying to give the public the illusion that there is a “difference” between the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The reason the statist propaganda-merchant is trying to perpetuate the meme that there is a difference between the two major parties is so the general public will not look elsewhere for the solution to their problems. If one can get the Democrats and Republicans fighting with each other, it gives the illusion that they are “different” to the degree they “fight.” Indeed they DO have “differences”, however the differences are over trivial issues. On all the major issues the Democrats and Republican’s are identical, overtly and covertly, thus they are the same political party in effect. You saw how many of Bush’s policies Obama kept in place when he came into office ostensibly to “change” things. The same thing will happen if the Republicans take back the White House, ad infinitum.

So this is why Ron Paul is such a threat to the Establishment. He’s running on the GOP ticket basically so he can get mainstream media exposure. The mainstream tried to ignore him in the last election. Remember how Hannity practically spat on Dr. Paul in the 2008 election? Remember how all the other pundits treated him? Then, when he suddenly raised millions of dollars with his “money bombs” and millions of voters started joining the grassroots Ron Paul Revolution — which kicked off the Tea Party Revolution — it wasn’t “politically correct” to spit on him any longer. Worse, they couldn’t ignore him into oblivion like they ignored all other dissenting candidates. Third party candidate Ross Perot was only able to get mainstream media exposure because he purchased it with his personal wealth. Ralph Nader nor Harry Brown, on the other hand, have been able to purchase such exposure, thus they have never been able to get an alternative vision into the public domain.

For Ron Paul to win and use the vote to destroy the cultural Marxist-infested, totalitarian fiat empire, being built by controllers of the “liberal world order” is incomprehensible to them even though Pat Buchanan details in his new book,Suicide of a Superpower, the reasons why the moment of globalism and “free” trade has passed.

But such is the power of the zeitgeist, for the world is in revolt, from the Middle East to Wall Street. The 99-percent don’t know exactly HOW they have been screwed, but they do know that they HAVE been screwed — at least for the past 100 years. From the Tea Partiers to the Wall Street Occupiers in America, WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with:

1) a Congress that has been bought and sold by corporate fascists;

2) Presidents that start wars and act like Marxist dictators;

3) an activist Supreme Court that legislates from the bench making one-size fits all laws that ignore theoriginal intentof the Founders.

WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with many other things, but both the “Right” and the “Left” can agree with much of what Ron Paul offers, because his principles are American principles, and American principles are Constitutional Principles which accommodate both liberals and conservatives, Left or Right.

So don’t let CFR-infested, establishment propaganda spewed through the mainstream media or the DemoPublican police state dissuade you from voting for Ron Paul, whether he stays on the GOP ticket, goes Independent or starts a new party.

It is vital that all Americans stay true to their conscious, NOT their political parties. The U.S. Constitution does not even mention political parties; in fact many of the Founders warned us against them. The Founders called political parties “factions” and said that membership in them is dangerous to a democratic form of government. They warned us to stay away from entrenched political parties — such as the Democrats and Republicans — because entrenched political parties are only one step away from dictatorships. The Founders also warned us about entrenched politicians, and this is why no presidents ran for more than two terms up until the Grant presidency.

It is not too late to act. Vote out the incumbent congressmen, president and most of all, the incumbent DemoPublican political party. Vote in Ron Paul no matter what scare tactics the pundits on CNN, FOX NEWS or MSNBC proselytize with. Ron Paul CAN get 38% of the vote and win the presidency. This is not an opinion, it’s mathematical fact.

RON PAUL CAN WIN — AND NOT ONLY SPOIL NOTHING — BUT POSSIBLY SAVE THE REPUBLIC!

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If you spend much time watching the mainstream news, then you know how incredibly vapid it can be. It is amazing how they can spend so much time saying next to nothing. There seems to be a huge reluctance to tackle the tough issues and the hard questions. Perhaps I should be thankful for this, because if the mainstream media was doing their job properly, there would not be a need for the alternative media. Once upon a time, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the dissemination of news in the United States, but that has changed. Thankfully, the Internet in the United States is free and open (at least for now) and people that are hungry for the truth can go searching for it. Today, an increasing number of Americans want to understand why our economy is dying and why our national debt is skyrocketing. An increasing number of Americans are deeply frustrated with what is going on in Washington D.C. and they are alarmed that we seem to get closer to becoming a totalitarian police state with each passing year. People want real answers about our foreign policy, about our corrupt politicians, about our corrupt financial system, about our shocking moral decline and about the increasing instability that we are seeing all over the world, and they are not getting those answers from the mainstream media. If the mainstream media will not do it, then those of us in the alternative media will be glad to tackle the tough issues. The following are 40 hard questions that the American people should be asking right now….

#4 The U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of incompetence that is absolutely mind blowing. So what possible justification is there for allowing the Federal Reserve to continue to issue our currency and run our economy?

#5 Why does the euro keep dropping like a rock? Is this a sign that Europe is heading for a major recession?

#9 How in the world can Mitt Romney say with a straight face that the individual health insurance mandate that he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts was based on “conservative principles”? Wouldn’t that make the individual mandate in Obamacare “conservative” as well?

#10 If the one thing that almost everyone in the Republican Party seems to agree on is that Obamacare is bad, then why is the candidate that created the plan that much of Obamacare was based upon leading in so many of the polls?

#11 What did Mitt Romney mean when he stated that he wants “to eliminate some of the differences, repeal the bad, and keep the good” in Obamacare?

#12 If no Republican candidate is able to accumulate at least 50 percent of the delegates by the time the Republican convention rolls around, will that mean that the Republicans will have abrokered convention that will enable the Republican establishment to pick whoever they want as the nominee?

#13 Why are middle class families being taxed into oblivion while the big oil companies receiveabout $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks a year from the federal government?

#14 Why have we allowed the “too big to fail” banks to become even larger?

#15 Why has the United States had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976?

#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs. How in the world could we allow that to happen?

#17 If the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, then why don’t our politicians do something about it?

#18 If you can believe it, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have permanently closed down since 2001. So exactly what does that say about our economy?

#19 Why was the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall made in China?Wasn’t there anyone in America that could make it?

#20 If low income jobs now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States, then how are we going to continue to have a vibrant middle class?

#24 How can we say that we have a successful national energy policy when the average American household will spend a whopping $4,155 on gasoline by the end of this year?

#25 Why does it take gigantic mountains of money to get a college education in America today? According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark in early 2012. Isn’t there something very wrong about that?

#26 Why do about a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who don’t pay their bills to be put in jail?

#27 If it costs tens of billions of dollars to take care of all of the illegal immigrants that are already in this country, why did the Obama administration go around Congress and grant “backdoor amnesty” to the vast majority of them? Won’t that just encourage millions more to come in illegally?

#31 How in the world did scientists in Europe decide that it was a good idea for them to create a new “killer bird flu” that is very easy to pass from human to human?

#32 If our founding fathers intended to set up a limited central government, then why does the federal government just continue to get bigger and bigger?

#33 Are we on the verge of an absolutely devastating retirement crisis? On January 1st, 2011 the very first of the Baby Boomers started to reach the age of 65. Now more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be turning 65 every single day for the next two decades. So where in the world are we going to get all the money we need to pay them the retirement benefits that we have promised them?

#34 If the federal government stopped all borrowing today and began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the U.S. national debt. So does anyone out there actually still believe that the U.S. national debt will be paid off someday?

#35 If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are an all-time record 46 million Americans now on food stamps?

#36 How can we say that we have the greatest economy on earth when we have a child poverty rate that is more than twice as high as France and one out of every four American children is on food stamps?

#37 Since 1964, the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House of Representatives has never fallen below 85 percent. So are the American people really that stupid that they would keep sending the exact same Congress critters back to Washington D.C. over and over and over?

#38 What does it say about our society that nearly one-third of all Americans are arrested by the time they reach the age of 23?

#39 Why do so many of our politicians think that it is a good idea to allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens on American soil and indefinitely detain them without a trial?

#40 A new bill being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would give the U.S. government power to shut down any website that is determined to “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. Many believe that the language of the new law is so vague that it would allow the government to permanently shut down any website that even links very briefly to “infringing material”. Prominent websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would be constantly in danger of being given a “death penalty”. The American people need to ask their members of Congress this question: Do you plan to vote for SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act)? If the answer is yes, that is a clear indication that you should never cast a single vote for that member of Congress ever again.

“While it is good to see serious debate about our debt crisis, I cannot support the reported deal on raising the nation’s debt ceiling. I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling, and I never will.

“This deal will reportedly cut spending by only slightly over $900 billion over 10 years. But we will have a $1.6 trillion deficit after this year alone, meaning those meager cuts will do nothing to solve our unsustainable spending problem. In fact, this bill will never balance the budget. Instead, it will add untold trillions of dollars to our deficit. This also assumes the cuts are real cuts and not the same old Washington smoke and mirrors game of spending less than originally projected so you can claim the difference as a ‘cut’.”

“The plan also calls for the formation of a deficit commission, which will accomplish nothing outside of providing Congress and the White House with another way to abdicate responsibility. In my many years of public service, there have been commissions on everything from Social Security to energy policy, yet not one solution has been produced out of these commissions.

“By denying members the ability to offer amendments and only allowing an up-or-down vote that will take place in the hectic time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, this Commission essentially disenfranchises the vast majority of members from meaningfully participating in the debate over reducing spending and balancing the budget. Furthermore, despite the claims of the bill’s proponents, there is nothing to stop the commission from recommending tax increases.

“One of the reasons why I humbly suggest that I am the most qualified Presidential candidate is my experience to see and understand the long track record of failure, disappointments, and bad recommendations made by such commissions. Times like these require statesmanship and steady leadership, which I and the grassroots activists who have joined my campaign believe I am uniquely qualified to provide.

“What should bother Americans most is that under cover of this debt ceiling circus, we learned from a recent GAO one-time, limited audit that the Federal Reserve secretly pumped $16 trillion into American and foreign banks over three years. All of the Fed’s fat cat cronies were taken care of at the expense of the American public.

“To put that into perspective, our entire national debt is $14.5 trillion, and our annual deficit will be about $1.6 trillion, meaning the Federal Reserve created and appropriated more than our entire national debt to banks around the world in a few short years. We have been fighting in Congress these past few weeks over raising our debt ceiling by $2 trillion, an amount the Fed secretly gave away to just one big bank.

“For decades, politicians have promised future restraint in exchange for hikes in the debt limit. We are always told that we must act immediately to avoid a crisis. But time and time again, politicians reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, and we soon find ourselves in a crisis being led by the same folks who wish only to maintain the status quo.

“I believe in the great American traditions of free markets, sound money, and personal Liberty. But we are moving far away from what made us the greatest nation in human history. We must cut spending and balance our budget now, before it is too late.

“Let me be clear. The cuts we must make will not be easy, and there will be difficult times in the short run. But I have the greatest confidence that if we come together as a People, work hard, and do the right things, our country will be back on track in no time and on its way to unprecedented prosperity. But, if we continueto print money and pyramid debt, we will destroy ourselves and lose the promise of America forever.

“These difficult times require a President willing to stand against runaway spending. If elected, I will veto any spending bill that contributes to an unbalanced budget, and I will balance the budget in the first year of my term. I will not allow the Federal Reserve to destroy the value of our money by shoveling dollars into the pockets of its banker friends.

“I remain committed to working on behalf of the American people to drastically reduce spending and implement fundamental changes that will reform government and restore our nation’s prosperity.”

Any LRC reader who’s not been holed up in Guantanamo has by now read all about Ron Paul’s historic opening hearing in his new role as head of the subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve. In my naïveté, I am still shocked at the laziness of Dr. Paul’s critics.

In this particular case, the critics directed their fire at Tom DiLorenzo, one of Paul’s witnesses. Tom has already answered their general charges here, but I think it will be useful to go through and dissect this Washington Post article by Dana Milbank, since it so beautifully epitomizes the half-hour hatchet job in these affairs. (Full disclosure: Tom is a personal friend.)

DiLorenzo Hiding His True Views?

Right off the bat, Milbank implies that DiLorenzo was trying to sneak his anti-Lincoln views under the subcommittee’s radar:

The Republican takeover of the House put a chairman’s gavel in the hands of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the gadfly GOP presidential candidate with a cult following. On Wednesday, he used that gavel for the first time – to remarkable effect.

The hearing itself was lively – based on Paul’s desire to abolish the Federal Reserve and bring back the gold standard – but what really stood out was Chairman Paul’s leadoff witness: a Southern secessionist.

The “short bio” the witness provided with his testimony omitted salient pieces of his resume, including his 2006 book, “Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe.” But the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, William Lacy Clay (Mo.) did some homework and learned more about the witness, Thomas DiLorenzo of Loyola University Maryland.

Milbank certainly gives the impression that DiLorenzo had taken all of his “nutjob” Lincoln stuff out of his bio, and perhaps left in only his doctoral dissertation and some other academic pieces – hoping against hope that the lazy congressmen wouldn’t find out about the dark side of DiLorenzo the bomb-thrower.

But anybody who knows Tom, knows that he is hardly squeamish about his views. So I asked Tom to send me a copy of the “short bio” he sent to the subcommittee. It contains this:

Does the above look like somebody who is trying to pass himself off as a moderate Republican bean counter? It’s true, the title “The Real Lincoln” by itself could suggest a book explaining what a great and religious man Honest Abe was. But in the context of all those other incendiary titles? I hardly think DiLorenzo was looking to avoid raising eyebrows.

Guilt By Association

After implying dishonesty in DiLorenzo’s representation of his views, Milbank then moves in for the kill:

DiLorenzo, the congressman told the committee, had called Lincoln “the first dictator” and a “mass murderer” and decreed that “Hitler was a Lincolnite.” Worse, Clay charged, “you work for a Southern nationalist organization.” “The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second southern secession and a society dominated by European Americans.”

At the witness table, DiLorenzo scoffed and waved his hand dismissively at Clay. But neither he nor Paul attempted to refute Clay’s allegations.

Approached after the hearing, the witness said: “I gave a couple of a lectures to a group of college students 15 years ago that are associated with this thing called League of the South.”

As it turns out, “this thing” called the League of the South Institute was listing DiLorenzo on its Web site as recently as 2008 as an “affiliated scholar.” A secessionist Web site, DumpDC, identified DiLorenzo the same way last year when it published an interview with DiLorenzo in which he is quoted as saying “secession is not only possible but necessary if any part of America is ever to be considered ‘the land of the free’ in any meaningful sense.”

And there you have it: DiLorenzo had the chutzpah to say a guy who was directly responsible for a war that left over 600,000 people dead, was a “mass murderer.” (For those questioning Lincoln’s responsibility, keep in mind that (a) the Confederate states didn’t want to take over the entire United States, they simply wanted to secede and (b) things like Sherman’s March werewar crimes, if that term is to mean anything.)

As far as DiLorenzo’s affiliation with the League of the South: I realize Dana Milbank may not be familiar with how academia and non-profit relationships work, but there is nothing contradictory in DiLorenzo saying he merely gave some talks to a group, and then that group still listing him as an “affiliated scholar” years later.

At this point we can wonder what Milbank’s point is. Don’t worry, he tells us:

DiLorenzo, a self-proclaimed historical revisionist, is entitled to say whatever he likes. But it raises doubts about Ron Paul and his causes if this is the best he can come up with for his first act as chairman of the Financial Services Committee’s monetary policy subcommittee.

I have gone back and re-read the previous paragraphs in Milbank’s article. I confess I still don’t see what DiLorenzo’s views on the necessity of secession have to do with Ron Paul’s agenda with respect to auditing the Fed or bringing back the gold standard. Milbank certainly did nothing to refute DiLorenzo’s claim that only secession could restore freedom to parts of America.

Gotcha Moments

Milbank pauses in his article to deploy his hatchet on Ron Paul and Richard Vedder. Milbank first accuses Paul of bad math, though here Paul probably meant dividing total Fed bailouts by the number of unemployed (rather than the whole population of the United States), in which case the “error” disappears.

As far as Vedder, yes he fell into a cross-examination trap. He had said that the Federal Reserve fosters bubbles, but declined to speculate on where the next bubble would arise. Vedder went so far as to say, “Economists who make predictions are foolish.”

This then opened him up to a Democratic critic (Al Green of Texas) who asked him if the gold standard would be better for America, and then when Vedder said yes, Green brought up Vedder’s earlier disdain for predictions. Okay, very nice, but that hardly disqualifies Vedder’s general position that (a) we can be confident that a central bank will screw up the economy without (b) being able to predict beforehand exactly the form the screw up will next take. (By the same token, I could “predict” to the leaders of North Korea that pure capitalism would greatly enrich their people, but I would have no idea how many shopping malls would be in Pyongyang two years after the reforms.)

The Peculiar Institution

In his final paragraphs, Milbank moves the crosshairs back to DiLorenzo:

DiLorenzo went so far as to say there is no need for the government to guarantee bank deposits. “I’m not sure before we had an FDIC you could make a case bank runs were worse,” he argued.

“We had the Great Depression,” Green pointed out.

“Well, yes, for a few short periods,” the witness allowed.

It was peculiar to portray the Depression as “short.” Then again, it was peculiar of DiLorenzo tosay last year that “I saw it as my duty to spread the truth about what a horrific tyrant Lincoln was.” And it was peculiar of DiLorenzo to write in 2005 that “the League of the South advocates peace and prosperity in the tradition of a George Washington or a Thomas Jefferson.”

As far as the FDIC issue, obviously Tom DiLorenzo was not saying the entire Great Depression was short. What he was saying is that there were a few years of bank runs during the Great Depression, but that this was not sufficient to make the case for FDIC. (DiLorenzo was contrasting taxpayer-guaranteed bailouts of irresponsible banks, with the earlier system of bankruptcy proceedings.)

Now on to Lincoln, the real “problem” with DiLorenzo: Yes, it is “peculiar” for him to hold those views, in the sense that most Americans have been taught that Lincoln is a hero, the greatest of presidents who “saved the Union.” Yet as DiLorenzo’s work has documented, Lincoln was a tyrant. And it’s not even the “mere” issue of not allowing people to leave the government of which he was the sitting head, but also rather tyrannical things like locking up newspaper editors who disagreed with his policies. (Here’s an example from a non-pro-Southern website of Lincoln seizing newspapers for apparently printing hoaxes. The reader can surely see the slippery slope involved, but again I am offering this “understandable” example since it comes from a neutral source that isn’t condemning Lincoln in the discussion.)

People who worry about the abuse of civil liberties under the Bush and Obama administrations should recall that Lincoln famously suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Fortunately, we live in a system of checks and balances, and a U.S. district court overruled Lincoln. Oops, he just ignored them. But, when you’re trying to achieve important goals, you can’t be bothered by individual rights and what a U.S. district court thinks of your policies.

Finally, let’s deal with Milbank’s last “shocking” quotation, where DiLorenzo praises the League of the South as being in the tradition of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. First of all, if you click through and read the article, you will see that DiLorenzo is defending his friend Tom Woods from similar character attacks. In other words, when Woods made a splash with his own book on American history, people trotted out the zombie strategy of linking him to the “neo-Confederate” League of the South. So DiLorenzo was only talking about the League of the South to defend his buddy; it’s not (as Milbank is obviously trying to imply) that DiLorenzo looked at his calendar and said, “Whoa, it’s that time of the month when I have to go out and promote my employers, the League of the South.”

But more important is the fact that someone who thinks the Southern states should have been allowed to secede is quite clearly endorsing the principles of the Declaration of Independence. That’s the whole point, after all: When a people think that they are being oppressed by a government that is not representing their interests, then they have a God-given right to dissolve their ties with that government and form their own. That’s what the people in the Confederacy were doing.

Of course, the elephant in the room in all this is slavery. Obviously it was an awful thing that the institution existed in the first place, and that the political leaders in the South wanted to perpetuate it. But guess what, Mr. Milbank? George Washington andThomas Jefferson both owned slaves. And when the American colonies declared their secession from Great Britain, they consisted of a lot of slaveholders. If King George had – halfway through the War for American Independence – declared a new objective of freeing all U.S.-based slaves, would Milbank now say that the wrong side won that war?

This is the crux of the matter. If someone (like DiLorenzo) wants to praise the good things in the writings of the Founders, and also of the arguments in favor of Southern secession, that’s consistent. If someone else (say a Black Panther) wants to denounce the Confederacy, but also all the hypocritical Dead White Males who signed the Constitution and endorsed its offensive 3/5 clause, that too is consistent; fair enough.

But what doesn’t make any sense is for Milbank (and related critics like Paul Krugman and Matt Yglesias) to go along with the standard American civics lesson, which teaches that slave-owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were heroes of liberty, but then to recoil in horror at the idea that the Southern states should have been allowed to secede, because they had slaves and therefore forfeit any possibility of our (qualified) endorsement in that terrible episode in American history.

Conclusion

One of the most basic insights of Western civilization is that the ends don’t justify the means. (For example, everyone is praising the nonviolent methods through which the Egyptian people recently achieved political change.) Nobody in this day and age is defending the institution of slavery as it existed in the Southern states. Even so, that doesn’t mean Abraham Lincoln was right to wage an awful war, even if one of its outcomes was the eradication of slavery.

On the matter of consistency, neo-conservatives are fine: They supported George W. Bush’s invasion to bring freedom to Iraqis, and they revere Abraham Lincoln as the greatest Republican of all time. But people like Krugman and Milbank are again being inconsistent: If Lincoln is so great – such that we don’t even need to explicitly defend him from the criticisms leveled by critics such as DiLorenzo – then George W. Bush should at least be a pretty good guy. And yet Krugman and Milbank have been quite critical over the Bush administration’s handling of war.

In any event, this entire episode actually encourages me. Everyone now knows that when Ron Paul holds a hearing on how the Fed contributes to unemployment, the “other side” has nothing much to say, except attacking the background of the witnesses.

This might resonate with professional pundits, and it may indeed raise doubts among some regular Joes who have never heard of Tom DiLorenzo. But I still bet if you polled a large number of black teenagers, and asked, “Do you think Ben Bernanke can’t sleep at night, knowing that the official unemployment rate in your demographic is just shy of 50 percent?” they probably would laugh at you.

(Reuters) – Republican Ron Paul, an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve, called Chairman Ben Bernanke “cocky” on Wednesday in the first hearing he held as the head of a House of Representatives panel that oversees the U.S. central bank.

Paul, a former presidential candidate who has waged a fierce battle for decades against the Fed, earned a platform to air his views after the Republicans won control of the House in November elections and made him chairman of a banking subcommittee.

Paul’s 2008 presidential bid earned him a fervent grassroots following and many Republicans now share his skeptical view of the Fed after its unprecedented actions to fight the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

At his first hearing of the subcommittee, Paul reiterated some of his unvarnished criticism of Bernanke.

“He is really cocky about this,” Paul said about Bernanke’s plans to unwind the toxic assets the Fed took on from troubled banks during the height of the 2007-2009 crisis.

But Democrats were more concerned by the writings of one of the witnesses, who has authored books and essays that harshly criticize President Abraham Lincoln and support the right of states to secede from the union ahead of the U.S. Civil War.

Democrats asked why Paul had invited DiLorenzo to testify about the link between monetary policy and job creation.

“You work for a southern nationalist organization that espouses very radical notions about American history,” Democratic Representative Lacy Clay told DiLorenzo.

“I still do not understand you being invited to testify today on the unemployment crisis, but I do know that I have no questions for you,” Clay said.

Paul said he was unfamiliar with that side of DiLorenzo’s work.

“I think that that’s typical of people who can’t compete on ideas, they have to try to discredit the individual,” Paul told Reuters as he signed copies of his book, “End the Fed,” after the hearing.

DiLorenzo told the subcommittee that the federal government should not have the power to seize failing banks in order to protect depositors’ assets, and that the economy would have been better off had the Obama administration allowed tottering businesses like General Motors to fail.

NO BETTER THAN RUSSIANS

“I see no reason why we Americans are better at central planning today than the Russians were in the 20th century, and that’s basically the mind-set you’re talking about,” DiLorenzo said

Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder accused lawmakers of corruption for supporting mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and said the banking industry would be better able to manage financial crises on its own, as J.P. Morgan did in 1907.

“At least J.P. Morgan had some skin in the game. When the banks failed, he failed,” Vedder said. “What does Bernanke have in the game? He gets his salary anyway, then he goes off to work for Goldman Sachs.”

Josh Bivens, an economist at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, represented the view held by many mainstream economists who say the recession would have been much worse had the Fed not lowered interest rates and pumped money into the economy through quantitative easing.

Just because the Fed’s actions failed to prevent a recession does not mean they were ineffective, he said.

“Imagine a town that is building a levee wall in response to a flood. You can say, ‘It’s the biggest wall we’ve ever built, the water keeps coming over, we should stop,'” Bivens said. “You have to build a wall as big as the shock.”

I speak of course of my recent visit to the U.S. House of Representatives to testify at Congressman Ron Paul’s first hearing on the Fed as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. The Rayburn House Office Building, like most government office buildings in Washington, D.C., is a very creepy place. Knowing that the majority of the congress critters who reside in those offices support the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and worse), and all the senseless death they have been responsible for, should send chills up any decent person’s spine.

As for the liars and bigots, one of the bigger ones, William Lacy Clay, a congressman from St. Louis who is (unfortunately) a member of the House Financial Services Committee, was in fine form. When he got his turn to question me he first denounced Austrian economics as some kind of fraud because it does not utilize the same positivistic methodology that, say, the Fed economists do. You know, the ones who were completely clueless about both the existence of the housing bubble and what to do once it burst. As Congressman Paul pointed out in the hearing, as late as 2008 Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was still forecasting an increased pace of economic growth. As seen in a YouTube video entitled “Ben Bernanke was Wrong,” as late as mid 2007 Bernanke was assuring the public on CNBC that there was no sub-prime mortgage problem, and that the world economy was in fine shape. “He had no idea what he was talking about,” Congressman Paul correctly stated.

It was Austrian economists like Mark Thornton, on the other hand, who were warning of a housing bubbleyears before it burst. The Nobel Prize committee would be shocked indeed to learn that Austrian economics is fraudulent, having awarded the best-known Austrian of the twentieth century, F.A. Hayek, the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1974. But hey, what does a hack politician from St. Louis know about economics anyway?

Fed apologists are apparently in a state of panic over the first sighting of two economists – Richard Vedder and myself – appearing before their committee to (horrors!) criticize the Fed. Rather than ask me a single question, Congressman Clay decided to lie about my background with a libelous smear. First, some background information: About thirteen years ago three fellow academics from Emory University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Alabama asked me if I would deliver a few lectures on the economics of the “Civil War” to a group of about twenty students at a week-long summer seminar. Two of them were historians and one was a philosopher, and they wanted to add some economics to the curriculum. They had just started something called “The League of the South Institute.” Since I lecture to students all over the country, and these were three fellow professors who I respected, I enthusiastically agreed. I recall it being a very enjoyable experience, as it always is when I get to teach students who attend a summer seminar for no college credit, just for the sake of learning. Such students are always among the very best that I encounter. That is the only connection I have ever had with the League of the South, which apparently still lists the titles of those old lectures somewhere on its Web site.

Clay lied through his teeth by stating that I “work for” the League of the South, and further stating that, consequently, I must endorse everything everyone associated with that organization has said in the succeeding thirteen years since I spoke to those students about the economics of the Civil War. This makes as much sense as saying that I endorse everything Congress says and does because I gave a presentation there on February 9.

Nor am I bigoted toward the people at the League of the South either, as is Congressman Clay. The oh-so-easily-offended Congressman Clay once told a white member of Congress whose Memphis, Tennessee district is 60% black that he could not collaborate with the Congressional Black Caucus for the benefit of his black constituents “until your skin turns black.” He’s apparently an Obama-style “racial healer.”

Having lied about my non-existent working relationship with the League of the South, making it sound like I pack my lunch and go to work there every day, Clay then declared that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) apparently disapproves of the League of the South. What a shocker! This is the same SPLC that accused the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. of “mainstreaming hate” by sponsoring a public debate on immigration policy. Their modus operandi is to label any individual or group that effectively criticizes their far-left, socialistic agenda as a “hater.” Apparently, associating with anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line in any way qualifies one as a “hater” and potential KKK recruit in the warped minds of the hateful and libelous SPLC.

Congressman Clay was not yet finished with his lies. I sent the committee 100 copies of my testimony along with a short one-page bio, as they requested. The bio listed several of my latest books, including Hamilton’s Curse and How Capitalism Saved America. The former discusses such economic topics as the origins and evolution of central banking in America, how America became a corporate welfare state, the economics of public debt, the founding of the Fed, the economic consequences of adopting the income tax, and more. How Capitalism Saved America covers such topics as the meaning of capitalism, anti-capitalism, the superiority of private versus government-operated transportation systems, the benefits to “the working class” of capitalism, the “robber barons,” the history and economics of antitrust, the role of the Fed in igniting the Great Depression, how the New Deal made the Great Depression worse, and the economics of the energy crisis of the ‘70s, among other things. And of course The Real Lincoln tells the story of the seventy-year political war over the “American System” of protectionism, corporate welfare, and a nationalized banking system that was finally cemented into place during the Lincoln administration.

The sleazy Congressman Clay, however, claimed that his crackerjack staff informed him that I have written nothing about economics in the past 15 years. My writings are all about history, he said, oblivious to the fact that economic history is a very relevant field to the question of the performance of the Fed over the past century. Indeed, Ben Bernanke himself claims to be an economic historian, having published numerous academic journal articles on the Great Depression. Several of my books discuss the origins of the first central bank, the Bank of the United States; its (abysmal) performance; its destruction by President Andrew Jackson; its replacement by the Independent Sub-Treasury System, Abraham Lincoln’s critiques of that system; the adoption of the National Currency Acts and Legal Tender Acts by the Lincoln administration; how that system performed over the next fifty years; the creation of the Fed; and its performance. Clay claims that, according to his crackerjack staff, there was nothing in all of this that would be relevant to a hearing on monetary policy.

Congressman Clay slithered out of the hearing room (shortly after the notorious Barney Frank vacated the premises) while a couple of his equally odious, far-left compatriots threw softballs at “their” witness, whose main argument was that the so-called Great Recession was caused by the bursting of the housing bubble, which in turn caused consumers to begin acting more responsibly by spending less and saving more. He didn’t put it that way, of course, but instead made the age-old (and thoroughly discredited) Keynesian argument that spending, and not savings, investment, production and work, is what causes economic growth and job creation. He made no mention at all in his prepared statement of any possible cause of the housing bubble in the first place. That would have been dangerous, for everyone in the room would have pegged the Fed as the Prime Suspect. But at the very end of the hearing he did offer his theory of the boom-and-bust cycle: Prosperity comes about whenever the government hires more bureaucrats and/or gives them more responsibilities; recessions occur whenever government cuts back on the number of bureaucrats and/or their meddling in the private sector. Bursts of regulation, he said, are the cause of prosperity, whereas deregulation is the cause of recessions and depressions. The Democrats on the committee sat there smiling and nodding their heads in approval. Do I really have to comment about such an asinine theory?

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